What to do with Bamboo

Ten Two Studios has these bamboo domino-shaped beads, and Lisa Vollrath challenged members of her design team to make something with them. I decided the shape and location of the holes made the perfect form for an art doll body. I've been wanting to make a button fairy after seeing so many posted on Flickr (including Margaret Field's tutorial) so I came up with this.

It had to have a bottle cap head, of course, with a face from the Tinted Twenties Rounds, and the wings are from a sheet of butterfly wrapping paper that I bought at Artist & Display.

Lisa posted a bamboo pendant tutorial with an Asian theme, so I tried a more Victorian version, making a faux tintype with aluminum foil tape and a packing tape transfer of a Victorian lady from the Little Women collage sheet jazzed up with a bit of Sharpie coloring. The cool beads are from Jess Poor, who has been cleaning out her studio space, and I strung it on silk ribbon.

Crafting 365, Days 159 & 160

"Make It Mondays" Returns

Lisa Vollrath has revived the "Make It Mondays" weekly creative prompt at Go Make Something, and I'm going to do my best to participate this year.

This week's theme was "Paris," and since I'm not one of those enamored with all things French, I didn't have any Eiffel Tower stamps or similar lying around. But I did find the brochure for the Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre exhibit that I saw at the Art Institute of Chicago, and I had the painted ATC backs and floral wrapping paper that I planned to use for the Milwaukee ATC group's April theme "Spring has Sprung." So this is what I came up with:

Getting ready for the weekend

Finishing up my ATCs for our local live trade on Saturday - The theme is "Random Words (Found Text)" and I've used text cut out of an old dictionary and a Regency romance novel. For the cards above I was inspired by a project on the Ten Two Studios Basic Transfer Techniques how-to CD and made contact paper transparencies using images from the CD. The cards below used Dover vintage clip art hand-colored with ink pads, Permapaque markers and gel pen.

The background technique for both sets was inspired by Kelly Rae Roberts' patchwork collage article in the Nov/Dec 2007 issue of Cloth Paper Scissors, but I used glue stick and ink pads instead of gel medium and acrylic paint. I also got carried away drawing swirly curlicues with my Crayola Spider-Writers. (They've been discontinued. What will I do when mine run out? Oh, woe! Oh, woe! Oh, dreadful, dreadful woe!)

Grandma's Chicken-Killing Pancakes

First I should clarify that this recipe was from my husband's paternal grandmother, whom I never had the chance to meet. At her funeral, family members shared stories about her and handed out this pancake recipe with that title. Apparently one day, she threw some leftover pancakes out for the chickens, and one choked on a piece and died!

I used to make Bisquick pancakes, but now I only do these. I usually do half the recipe, which makes about six large. If I don't have buttermilk on hand, I substitute milk and lemon juice. (Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice to measuring cup, then fill with milk to make one cup liquid.)

Grandma P's Chicken-Killing Pancakes
Mix together:
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt (I usually cut back a little)
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. sugar
2 eggs
2 cups buttermilk

Pour on hot griddle and serve with syrup. (Gotta have real maple syrup too!)

Spring in Wisconsin

I wish I had taken a photo yesterday of the little green crocus leaves pushing up, but now they're buried under a foot of snow. I saw my first robin of spring yesterday on the first day of spring. Hope it has a warm nest! (It was 50 degrees yesterday!)

Since the weather's so gloomy, here are the ATCs I made for the Gothic Alice in Wonderland swap at IllustratedATCs.com

Morbid Tendencies?

My brother just sent me an e-mail to say Arthur C. Clarke died. I have a paperback copy of 2001 signed by him, but I never met him. When we lived in Sri Lanka over 25 years ago, I knew people who knew him.

The odd thing on clicking through to the WaPo obit that my brother sent, I noticed that the obituary writers now have their own blog Post Mortem. In the comments on "About this Blog" someone asked why we needed a blog about obituaries and death, saying it was "offensive and in such poor taste." Yikes!

I remember when two of my friends were going through med school, and both of them in separate conversations remarked upon the fact that a date with my then boyfriend had included a trip to Crown Hill Cemetery to see where John Dillinger was buried. "Does he suffer from depression?" they asked. Apparently the medical books consider an obsession with cemeteries a negative thing. Whereas all my history friends saw nothing odd about it! In fact, one of my internship supervisors collected Victorian mourning artifacts and would dress up as a Civil War widow for Crown Hill events.

There was recently an article in the Journal-Sentinel about photographers who donate their time to photograph stillborn or recently deceased babies for the parents and the comfort that gives. Some people find Victorian post-mortem photographs creepy without thinking about the reason these photos were taken - fixing the image of a loved one who may never have been photographed in life. We are so overloaded with visual images today that we forget how precious they once were.

What's New in March?

Check out the Ten Two Studios holiday countdown March 7-23 covering St. Patrick's Day and Easter.

This weekend I'm teaching the Board Book class at Artist & Display. Since it's on the Sunday we're turning the clocks forward, I wonder how many people are going to show up an hour early.

On Saturday, March 15, I'll be doing ATC demos at A&D with some other members of our local ATC trading group.

ATCs For All is up an running. Go now!